1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information handling system optical drive operation, and more particularly to a method and system for setting optical drive write speed for writing information to optical media.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As information handling systems have proliferated, so has the amount of information handled and stored by information handling system users. One increasingly used option for storing these greater amounts of information is optical media. Optical disc drives write information to optical media with lasers that illuminate an optical medium to selectively alter the reflective qualities of the optical medium, and read the information by illuminating the optical medium with the laser at a lower power to measure the reflection from the optical medium. Typically, each optical drive writes to different types of optical media with write strategies developed by the optical drive manufacturer. As optical media manufacturers produce improved optical media, such as optical media that will accept information at greater optical drive write speeds, optical drive manufacturers update the firmware of the optical drives to have write strategies developed for the improved optical media. For instance, a CD-RW optical drive reads embedded ATIP start codes from CD-R optical discs to uniquely identify the CD-R medium. The optical drive then writes information to the medium using a write strategy associated with the ATIP start code that the optical drive has in a table in firmware. A standards body known as the Orange Forum assigns codes to CD-R and CD-RW optical media manufacturers each time a new optical medium is released so that optical drive manufacturers can develop optimal write speeds and strategies for use with the medium and store the developed write speed and strategy in firmware. Other optical media, such as DVD media, have or may have similar implementations of such identification codes, either through assignment by a standards body or self-administered.
One difficulty that arises with the use of embedded codes on optical media to identify the media for optical drives is that an optical drive may read an embedded code from an inserted optical medium that the optical drive does not recognize. If the embedded identification code of an optical medium is not found in an optical drive's firmware, the optical drive typically reverts to a generic write strategy and write speed. Generally, optical drives slow the write speed for the generic write strategy to a value at which an acceptable quality write of information results regardless of the optical medium. However, the write speeds of optical drives and optical media tend to increase over time so that the use of a slow write speed with an unrecognized embedded code generally is an overly conservative approach. For instance, CD-R and CD-RW optical drive manufacturers typically load a current ATIP start table in firmware of optical drives at manufacture but do not typically update the firmware after manufacture. Thus, an optical drive installed in an information handling system may fail to recognize ATIP start codes of optical media released after manufacture of the optical drive, resulting in writes at slower speeds with generic write strategies even though newly developed optical media are typically designed to write at higher speeds. One solution is to compare an unrecognized ATIP start code with known codes, such as the last two digits of an ATIP start code. The write strategy for the closest known code is used to write information to the medium having the unknown code. However, use of write strategies of numerically close codes is unreliable and often little more than a guess that a proximately numbered optical media has similar write characteristics to an unknown optical media.